


Our Love Is Not A Victory March

by mythras_fire



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Trailer Scene for Captain America: Civil War, Canon Dialogue, Gift Fic, M/M, POV The Winter Soldier, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spoilers for the CA:CW trailer, amnesiac assassin woes, stucky!feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5874694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythras_fire/pseuds/mythras_fire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier’s head began to throb.</p>
<p>Why was this happening?!</p>
<p>How did he know the target?!?</p>
<p>Who the hell WAS Bucky?!?!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Love Is Not A Victory March

**Author's Note:**

  * For [giselleslash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/giselleslash/gifts).



> An alternate look at the lead-up to the exchange between Steve and Bucky in the Captain America: Civil War trailer.
> 
> This fic is dedicated to my good friend and fellow Stucky fangirl giselleslash on the occasion of her birthday, albeit a little belated, in which case, Happy un-Birthday Gigi!! ♥ ♥ ♥
> 
> Disclaimer: I borrowed dialogue from Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the trailer for Captain America: Civil War. All of these words belong to the writers of these movies.
> 
> The title of this story is a lyric from Leonard Cohen's beautiful song 'Hallelujah'. Cover art by me :)

  


*~**~**~**~**~**~*

…[TARGET ACQUIRED]…

From his current position hidden amongst the tall grass at the edge of a cliff, the Winter Soldier looked through the scope of his sniper rifle at the target who was sitting on the shore 100 feet below.

The target was completely alone for the first time since the beginning of the end. He had been surrounded by SHIELD personnel and those so-called Avengers day and night, leaving the Winter Soldier with no recourse but to watch.

And wait for the moment to strike.

That moment had finally come.

Paradoxically, the target would be eliminated in the very same location where the Winter Soldier had glitched and failed to eliminate him two weeks before when death and destruction had rained down from the sky.

No matter.

…[TARGET LOCKED]…

The Winter Soldier steadied his breathing so he could aim with precision for the kill shot. The target was sitting cross-legged on the sand with his back up against a small boulder, ostensibly gazing out at the rhythmically flowing waters of the Potomac passing him by. The exposure of his head and broad shoulders above the boulder made him a literal sitting duck just waiting to be picked off on the Winter Soldier’s whim.

Fatal mistake.

In that moment, however, the target shuffled his legs, resettling himself with his knees brought up semi-close to his chest as he laid a large rectangle of white paper against his thighs. Suddenly, he bent his knees to one side and leaned forward out of view, which made the Winter Soldier’s breath catch in his throat from the sudden loss of visual contact. He mentally logged the event for his post-mission report.

…[TARGET LOST;

STANDBY;

ACQUIRING TARGET]…

Old habits die hard, especially when they’re programmed into you. 

A few moments later, the Winter Soldier quietly let out the breath he’d been holding as the target came back into view with several writing implements now in hand.

…[TARGET ACQUIRED]…

The Winter Soldier scooted forward a centimeter or two on his belly and readjusted the scope magnification on the rifle nestled into its accompanying tripod, just to be sure. He rested most of his upper body on his left arm and squinted through the scope to observe that everything was in place.

He saw that the target had opened what appeared to be a drawing pad, full of pencil sketches: some were mere line drawings, others detailed portraits complete with shading and color. The target was currently flipping through the pages of said sketch pad.

The Winter Soldier drew his eye away from the scope for a moment and moistened the index finger of his right hand to check wind velocity and direction in advance of his shot. 

…[WIND VELOCITY: 4mph;

WIND DIRECTION: SE]…

Not much wind today then, and coming towards him, making him upwind of the target. The only sounds were natural ones, birds chirping away in the trees on the opposite bank above the quiet but constant gurgle and gush of the rolling river. When he turned back to the gun, he could see that the page flipping had ceased and the target was poring over a page covered in pencil sketches. He looked through the scope once more and several portraits of a man came into focus.

Zooming in slightly he noticed, as his eye darted from one sketch to the next, that they were all a study of the same man from different angles, in different moods, and different stages of completion. Some were full-body sketches while others were just headshots on top of broad-looking shoulders. The close-cropped hair and crisp, fitted clothing suggested 1940’s military attire. Most of the facial expressions were happy, several of them showed the man laughing or smirking, and one or two showed him saluting the observer with all due solemnity.

Off to the right side of the page, there was a full-length sketch of a different man facing the disembodied sketches, almost as if it were the artist observing his works on a gallery wall. In stark contrast to the strong lines and muscled features of the military man, the man presented here looked frail and small, draped in hand-me-down clothes that were too big for his scrawny frame. In this sketch the man’s expression was one of… longing. The Winter Soldier was a master at reading body language and this man’s body just _ached_ to reach out for the object of his pining. 

The Winter Soldier stared transfixed and confused. There was something about the looks of this runt of a man that caused an involuntary shudder to escape down his spine. A sudden gust of wind blew his hair across his face, obstructing his view and breaking the spell. The Winter Soldier shook himself minutely, blinking furiously as he was finally released from the thrall of distraction. This kind of thing had also been occurring more often since the beginning of the end. 

He took a steadying breath and felt resolve for the mission wash over him once more. The metallic index finger of his left hand tightened on the trigger.

…[TARGET LOCKED]…

In the next moment, however, a burst of white light flashed across his field of view in the scope, and magnified as it was the Winter Soldier was momentarily blinded. He pulled his head back to blink a few times while he waited for the spots in his vision to dissipate. He resisted the urge to rub at his eyes and squinted into the scope once more.

He ascertained then that the cause of the blinding light had been from the target flipping to a blank page in the large sketch pad. The sun had mostly been hidden behind an overcast sky, perfect for a day of sniping, but the cloud cover seemed to be breaking up. The Winter Soldier needed to get down to business and complete his mission so that he could return to the Hydra base for debriefing and re-conditioning and…

Oh.

No.

He couldn’t. Hydra was gone.

The Winter Soldier was momentarily blinded again but this time the culprit was the onslaught of flashbacks that exploded in front of his mind’s eye.

_Hunting down the target…_

_The freeway chase in downtown Washington D.C. …_

_The target addressing him as… “Bucky?”_

_His confused reply, “Who the hell is Bucky?”_

Those words clanged around in the Winter Soldier’s head, fighting for prominence amidst a cacophony of noises from the destruction of those monstrous airships and the fight over this very river.

_Asking Pierce at the Hydra base who that man on the bridge had been…_

_“But I knew him”…_

_The chair…_

_The screaming…_

_Then nothing._

There was nowhere to look to get away from these images. They were always there when he closed his eyes so he kept them wide open, refusing to even blink.

Movement down below caught the Winter Soldier’s eye and he saw through the scope that the target had been writing something on the blank sketchpad page.

**I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal.** was written in thick letters at the top of the page.

Unbidden, the memory of the moment the target had uttered that phrase muscled its way to the front of the fray, effectively silencing the background chatter the way it had on the deck of that airship. 

No. Wait. He’d heard him say it differently. So why did this sentence look so familiar?

The Winter Soldier’s head began to throb. 

Why was this happening?!

How did he know the target?!?

Who the hell WAS Bucky?!?!

The Winter Soldier gritted his teeth to keep from screaming in frustration and finally gave in to the nagging urge to rub his eyes, digging the palms of his gloved hands into his eye sockets, trying to squeeze the images out of his head through sheer force of will. In doing so he knocked over the sniper rifle and attached tripod, which fell over the right edge of the cliff in a spectacular free fall. It glanced off a rock jutting out from the cliff face, and because this was the story of the Winter Soldier’s life, fell straight into the water with a splash instead of onto the shore where he could retrieve it.

Now he did cry out in rage. 

…[MISSION COMPROMISED;

ASSET HAS BEEN MADE;

DISAPPEAR.]…

Before the Winter Soldier could unfurl from his army crawl and make his escape, though, he felt as much as heard the pounding footsteps of someone running up to the edge of the cliff. A shadow fell across his back. The sound of heavy breathing was mostly drowned out by the beating of his own heart in his ears.

He knew who it was without having to look. He knew the shore was now empty save for a discarded sketchpad and drawing implements strewn about in the sand. 

He also knew that even with his super-soldier reflexes he wouldn’t have time to go for the Uzi in the holster between his shoulder blades or the daggers sheathed at his thighs. So he waited for the final moment of his too-long short life to come to its bitter and inevitable end. The Winter Soldier’s kill-or-be-killed programming was incapable of presenting him with any other scenario.

Just like on any one of the innumerable occasions in the past 70 years when the Winter Soldier had stared Death in the face and shrugged, time slowed to a crawl in that moment, and the decision to _kill_ or _be killed_ was made. Obviously, the Winter Soldier’s mind had always previously chosen _kill_ over _be killed_ and his super-soldier body had taken care of the rest.

Curiously, on this most probably final occasion his mind had fallen down the rabbit hole and landed 3,000 feet up in the air on a giant metal platform that was hurtling down to Earth in a fiery blaze. He had been trying to complete his mission but the target kept trying to distract him…

_“You know me.”_

_“NO I DON’T!”_

_“Bucky, you’ve known me your whole life. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”_

_“ **SHUT UP!** ”_

_“I’m not going to fight you. You’re my friend.”_

_“You’re my mission… YOU’RE. MY. **MISSION**.”_

_“Then finish it. Cuz I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”_

His eyes were still closed, his features locked in a horrible grimace of pain. He didn’t register that the shadow had come closer and was now kneeling a mere three feet behind him. Subconsciously, the Winter Soldier rolled to the right onto his back, metal arm thrown over his face, trying instinctually to escape a memory from two weeks ago only to be sucker-punched by another memory from a lifetime ago... Someone else’s life.

This memory belonged to a military man. The Winter Soldier gasped as if he really had been viscerally punched in the gut. 

The men he saw before him were the same ones from the sketch pad. The military man’s best friend had just come back from his mother’s funeral and now had nowhere else to go.

_“…thank you, Buck. But I can get by on my own.”_

He looked up into the mil- Buck’s eyes, and the Winter Soldier saw the same look he’d seen on that gallery page. 

_“The thing is, you don’t have to. I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal.”_

Buck reached out and grasped the smaller man’s shoulder when he smiled in acquiescence and then everything went dark.

STEVE.

Bucky’s eyes shot open. 

Where was he? Why was it so dark? Why did his eyes sting like he’d been trying to hold back tears? 

Bucky’s brain registered that something was laying on his forehead shielding his eyes and a moment later he realized that that something was attached to his left shoulder because it moved when he flexed his arm. Only, his brain was telling him he had lost his left arm. And it was cold against the heated skin of his cheeks. But since he seemed to be able to move it, he pulled it away from his face and squinted up at a gray-blue sky, waiting for his vision to clear.

That’s when he felt a presence beside him and realized he wasn’t alone. The Winter Soldier immediately checked his surroundings for escape routes. 

…[CLOSEST EXIT: CLIFF EDGE]…

He turned his head to the left and peered over the edge of the cliff, already knowing what he would see down there. What he had been about to do. What he had failed to do. Twice. And now he would pay the price for it.

Time was speeding back up and the Winter Soldier had a final choice to make. 

…[KILL OR BE KILLED]…

The Winter Soldier made his decision and began to tense all his muscles for one last showdown. He would go down swinging- a quick draw for the katana-sharp daggers at his thigh. But in that split second before he launched himself into action, a voice that Bucky would recognize anytime, anywhere, asked in a quiet hopeful tone, “Buck, do you remember me?” 

Bucky turned his head to the right and beheld a sight he never thought he’d see ever again. Bucky Barnes stared at Steve Rogers through the ragged long strands of his dark brown hair for a long moment before croaking out, “Your mom’s name was Sarah. You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.” Bucky then poured all of his feelings into those big expressive eyes of his and said, “See, what did I tell ya, pal? I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

The look of unimaginable relief on Steve’s face caused the Winter Soldier to do something he hadn’t done in over 70 years.

He smiled.


End file.
